This disclosure relates to a gas turbine engine and, more particularly, to a turbine airfoil segment that may be incorporated into a gas turbine engine.
Gas turbine engines typically include a compressor section, a combustor section and a turbine section. During operation, air is pressurized in the compressor section and is mixed with fuel and burned in the combustor section to generate hot combustion gases. The hot combustion gases are communicated through the turbine section, which extracts energy from the hot combustion gases to power the compressor section and other gas turbine engine loads.
Both the compressor and turbine sections may include alternating series of rotating blades and stationary vanes that extend into the core flow path of the gas turbine engine. For example, in the turbine section, turbine blades rotate and extract energy from the hot combustion gases that are communicated along the core flow path of the gas turbine engine. The turbine vanes, which generally do not rotate, guide the airflow for the next set of blades. The turbine vanes can be provided in arc segments that each include one or more airfoils that radially extend between inner and outer platforms or endwalls. Blades and vanes are generally referred to as “airfoils.”
Turbine vanes and blades can include film cooling features to provide a boundary layer of cooling fluid along external surfaces, which protects the airfoil from the hot combustion gases in the core flow path. Non-linear flow analyses and complex strain modeling are required to achieve good cooling, making practical results difficult to predict. Loading and temperature considerations also impose substantial design limitations, which cannot easily be generalized from one system to another.